In times of war, it was almost a reassuring thought that it could always be a little more poignant on SBS6. In the large-scale game show Million Dollar Island creator John de Mol gives humanity another chance to show itself from its worst side. One hundred Dutch people travel to a (beautiful) uninhabited island near the Philippines, to survive there for two months. They all wear a wristband worth 10,000 euros. The goal is to eventually collect as many of other people’s wristbands as possible, in order to be eligible for the top prize of 1 million euros. Fighting each other out is logically a plus.
Things got out of hand in the first episode. Upon arrival on the island, the participants rushed into the limited amount of food, and after five minutes a fight almost broke out over an axe. Participant (and retired arborist) Ruud provided the sharpest analysis: ‘Everyone is fixated on that million, and everything that stands in the way has to give way.’ Another participant spoke of the outbreak of war. Well.
The Hunger Games packaged as fun Sunday evening entertainment. The question is whether, and especially where, this cynical exploitation of ordinary Dutch people will ever stop. When the South Korean Squid Game became a hit, many people joked about the danger that John de Mol would convert this series (in which people participate in deadly children’s games to earn money) into a real format. In fact we have that ‘Squid Gamification’ with The Dance Marathon and Million Dollar Island had long since been reached – were it not for the fact that, fortunately, death does not play a role here (note: the participants had not yet run out of food in the first broadcast). Everything revolves around a big pot of money, in a program whose aim is nothing more than to make the weak suffer for our entertainment. The fact that the whole thing was very ostentatiously sponsored by exploitation specialist Amazon topped it off.
Moreover, the timing could not have been worse, during a weekend in which concerns about global food shortages grew. In news hour A farmer working in Ukraine feared a worldwide disruption of the food chain, because there is hardly any harvest in the country. He foresaw a doubling of the grain price, and feared that serious food shortages would not only arise in Ukraine, but also in vulnerable regions such as North Africa and the Middle East. ‘There is a lot of talk about energy, but you can’t eat gas.’ The farmer was in tears.
Earlier in the broadcast, residents of the occupied city of Kherson already said that the store shelves were almost everywhere empty. They could be happy if they could find some yogurt somewhere. Just before one of the residents was interviewed, a neighbor had brought her another jar of honey. People share everything they have left to drag each other through.
Simultaneously, on SBS6, another well-being game was played about the ownership of a handful of pasta.